


Keeper

by lightgetsin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Quidditch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-17
Updated: 2007-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightgetsin/pseuds/lightgetsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd begun to think that Ginny Weasley didn't need a reason for crazy. He was starting to think this was just her, this girl who grabbed life by the double-fistfuls and rolled in it, just for the glee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://corvidae9.livejournal.com/profile)[**corvidae9**](http://corvidae9.livejournal.com/) for this year's [](http://community.livejournal.com/dearsanta/profile)[**dearsanta**](http://community.livejournal.com/dearsanta/) exchange. Thank you to [](http://treewishes.livejournal.com/profile)[**treewishes**](http://treewishes.livejournal.com/) for emergency beta.

"That close?" Ginny squinted down, head to one side.

"Oh yeah. That's the point, y'know." Oliver sketched the chasers in a crooked, stacked V-formation right up against the line of hoops, close enough for the blurry edges to run together. "Damn," he muttered, and tried unsuccessfully to readjust a line with his finger.

"And the Seeker's below," Ginny said.

"Right." Oliver inserted the Seeker with a quick blot. "Coming up fast, and like –" he demonstrated the angle with a dashed line. "Close quarters, see. No matter how good the Keeper is, he's going to be thinking a little bit about not fouling and bashing someone in the face."

"And it's too close in for the Beaters to do much," Ginny said, nodding. "We did something like that when we played Puddlemere's second string. 'Cept we're not that good, so Frank Bellwether fell off his broom trying not to break his arm, and broke his jaw."

"That's how you learn," Oliver said cheerfully. He considered his sketch critically. Not terrible, all things considered – he'd done worse with a pointed stick in the mud. Which this most certainly was not – here he had a tube of Madame LeBleaux's Secret Smile lip stain in Bronze Glow – looked like shiny brown, to him – and Ginny Weasley's flat, muscled stomach. She was propped on one elbow to look down her long body, unself-conscious of her bare breasts and the way the sheet was sliding off her hipbones.

"So where's the Quaffle, then?" she asked suddenly. "Who's got it coming in, I mean?"

"Er," said Oliver distractedly. "Right . . . there."

Ginny frowned. "Hold on, I think that's a freckle."

Oliver blinked. "Oh, er." He poked at it – Ginny twitched and sniggered – then leaned close and gently licked. "So it is," he murmured. "Just the right spot, all the same."

The stomach beneath his lips gave a sudden rumble. Oliver glanced up – spectacular view, that – trying to look offended. "Well, if that's what the peanut gallery thinks –"

"Sorry, sorry." She was laughing, one hand thrown over her face. "Just starved. You know how it is."

He did – he'd put down nearly two thousand calories for lunch, and that felt like it'd been a week ago. There was a knock on the door; they both looked for an owl at the window before catching themselves at it and laughing.

"I got it," Oliver said, rolling out of bed and scrabbling for a dressing gown. It was his turn, but mostly he was just hoping she wouldn't get dressed. "Hullo, got it, thanks," he said breathlessly to the waiter, taking charge of the laden cart. He'd been in the shower when she'd ordered for them, but she'd known what to get – about five stone of pasta and a lot of simple proteins.

"Cheers," said the waiter, smirking as Oliver signed the bill and tipped him. Oliver didn't know what the fuss was about – bloke must've seen thousands of fellows in their dressing gowns at this job.

She'd put on a t-shirt, he found when he turned around. Nothing else, though, and her legs went on for half an infinity. She was squinting up the lipstick tube like it was a rifle, frowning a little, and Oliver wondered guiltily if he'd ruined it or something. But she tossed it aside at sight of the food, entirely unconcerned.

"Hurry up, then, I'm about to faint of it," she said, crawling across the bed.

Oliver laid the food out on the tumbled blankets, and Ginny snapped up a piece of hot bread from the covered basket. She glanced up at him, then smirked exactly as the waiter had.

"What?"

She stretched for the water, gulping thirstily. "Y've got lipstick on your nose."

Oliver rubbed at his nose with a napkin. "Gone?"

"Yeah," said Ginny, smiling in a way that made him think he'd just smeared it. Well, as long as he was awake enough in the morning to spot it shaving and get it off. Awake in – Oliver checked the clock, which said a prim 'past bedtime' – under six hours. Mad, this. He'd spent a few minutes on the pitch yesterday trying to calculate how much energy he'd been expending with her here the past two nights, rather than resting up like he ought. It had come to quite a lot, at least until his name was called and all he could think about was the Quaffle and the hoops and how the Quidditch he'd been playing all his life was just a little child's game compared to this.

Which he'd known going in, of course. That was one of the first things they'd said to each other on day zero, the big convocation before they were all divided up for position trials. He'd been coming up the bleacher steps, looking for a spot, and he'd seen her from behind, close-cropped hair glinting coppery in the setting sun, and he'd instinctively thought _Weasley_. He'd thought she was Charlie, which would have been unexpected, but the trials were open to anyone who cared to enter, not just active League players. Then she'd turned around, and that _definitely_ wasn't Charlie. She'd seen him staring, squinted at him a little, then broke out into a grin, striding up her row to meet him on the steps. She was nearly as tall as he was, he saw; most men couldn't say that.

She'd remembered his name, like lots of people did when you were a Hogwarts Quidditch Captain, and he'd managed to recall hers without any embarrassing fumbling. She'd tugged him up a few rows and bullied her way into a pair of adjacent seats, shouting something about "glad you're here, good excuse to ditch Andrews, that Falcons twat."

"So, what's your goal," she'd asked right off, leaning in close to be heard over the crowd.

"Day three," said Oliver instantly. That was a good, safe answer, with just the possibility of outdoing himself. It took seven days to select the British World Cup team – seven players and seven alternates from the thousands of hopefuls who showed up, crowding an entire block of London hotels and getting up before sunrise every day to go portkey out to various stadiums and play for sixteen hours a day. Half the mob would be eliminated the first day with a _thank you for coming, please make yourself scarce_ owl delivered to their hotel room sometime in the early evening. The lucky and the good would get a note directing them to the next morning's portkey site, and it would go on. Oliver had no illusions about his actual chances. He was a big enough fish in his own smaller pond, but out here there were at least twenty Keepers who could make him look like an amateur. He was just here for the thrill, and for the challenge.

"Day three," Ginny had said, and lifted her hand for a high five. "Let's hear it for day three."

They'd sat together through the opening orientation, then discovered they were in the same hotel. Oliver had intended to go virtuously up to his room and get a solid night's sleep, but Ginny had laughed and dragged him into the hotel pub. She'd told him he would be missing a vital part of the experience – "people go a little crazy this week, you know" – and it'd turned out she was right. He'd only had one drink, unlike many people who weren't even expecting to make it the one day, but he'd been dizzy and buzzed on the crowd and the atmosphere when Ginny tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he wanted to walk her back to her room.

"What?" he'd asked in the lift, finding her staring at him in its mirrored wall.

"Mmm," she'd said, flipping her key in her fingers. "Just thinking that I really want to shag you right now."

"Erm," Oliver had said, mouth going dry. "I, uh—" and he'd been going to say _we should sleep, important for tomorrow_, but she was tall and gorgeous and grinning at him, and that was just utterly impossible. _People go a little crazy_, Oliver had thought a few minutes later as he bent his head between her spread thighs.

They'd been in a hurry the next morning; Ginny had kissed him breathless and wished him luck and dashed off for her portkey. It had been a long and brutal day, though Oliver was sure he'd done well, and he'd managed not to think about her too terribly much. It was only an accident, really, that he got out of the lift on her level on his way back in that night, still in full gear. He'd realized it when he reached her room, shaken his head, and turned around to find her striding down the hall, long legs eating up the distance.

"Well hullo then," she'd said energetically, just as if she hadn't spent the past day having her body pummeled to a pulp. "Dinner? Come in, let me change."

And he'd followed her in, his own ragged elation flaring before her bright blaze. She'd stood outside the bathroom door, head tilted to squint in at the mirror as she stripped off her gloves and flipped her fingers casually through her hair, tinged a shade darker with sweat. She'd been talking about a catch she'd made – "bounced off my wrist, and I just clapped my hands and there it was" – when their eyes had met in the mirror and she'd broken off.

"This is just---" Oliver had said, grinning helplessly.

"Completely _fantastic_," she'd said, spinning around and grabbing him. "I _love this game_."

"Me too," he'd said as they landed on the bed, hands everywhere. It wasn't until she'd wriggled out of her trousers and he'd slid a hand up under her Quidditch robes between her legs that Oliver remembered he was still wearing his leather gloves. He realized when she arched and cried out at his first touch, and he'd sat up, gone to strip them off and the rest of his gear.

"Leave them on," she'd said, hiking up her robe and scrabbling for his trousers. They'd shagged fast and dirty right there, with the smell of exertion and the pitch coming off them both, most of their gear still on and the bathroom mirror muttering disgustedly to itself about how they could at least close the door. And then they'd gone again in the shower, slower and even dirtier, Ginny converting him forever to the virtues of tall women.

And here they were after day two, which was practically going steady by World Cup trials week standards. Nothing like this had ever happened to Oliver before – life on the second string was more slog than glamour most days, and he hardly had the time for, well, anything that wasn't Quidditch.

"I think tomorrow's it for me," Ginny was saying, dishing herself up some pasta. "Made it _to_ tomorrow right enough, but that'll be all for me."

"Day three," Oliver said, lifting his fork in salute.

"Exactly." She beat him to a piece of bread, smirked, and flourished it briefly in the air like a caught Snitch. "How 'bout you, though?" she asked through a mouthful.

"I think," said Oliver slowly, "I think tomorrow will be . . . I have a feeling, er. I was really good today," he admitted, unaccustomedly shy.

"Yeah?" her fork paused halfway to her mouth. "You starting to think about making it to day four, are you?"

"I don't know," said Oliver. "I mean, it's not completely impossible for someone with my stats, if I'm very, very lucky."

"Well then," said Ginny. "Be lucky."

"Yeah," said Oliver, and took a hasty gulp of water. "Erm, about that."

"Yeah?" she poked around on the tray, and he reflexively pushed the beans and rice over.

"Erm, I was thinking," he said, watching her dish up. "If you, y'know, have to leave tomorrow night – and I probably will too, I mean no sense counting your eggs – but I was thinking what a drag it'd be waiting for the owl alone and I was just wondering maybe you'd like to have dinner with me? After? When we're both, uh, we're both out?"

She stopped dishing and blinked up at him, and for perhaps the first time this week her face was still, not fired with leaping expressions. It was so very strange, and it made Oliver wonder again, as he had been wondering. Just a Quidditch thing, he knew that, just a trials week thing. Because people went a little crazy this week. But he'd started to wonder, and he really wanted to know – he'd begun to think that Ginny Weasley didn't need a reason for crazy. He was starting to think this was just her, this girl who grabbed life by the double-fistfuls and rolled in it, just for the glee. And that was . . . that was something else entirely.

There was an imperious rap at the window. Ginny dropped her fork and sprang up, crossing to throw it open. Two owls waited, hooting in hurried acknowledgement as she received their letters.

"Well," said Ginny, turning to face him with a sealed parchment in each hand. She'd left the sash open at her back, and the wind of the owls' passage blew her plain white t-shirt tight against her body, outlined there against the lights of London. She lifted the parchments, jiggling them lightly from hand to hand. "On three," she said, and tossed him his. "Oh, and by the way – if you're good enough tomorrow to make it to day four, I might let you pick the restaurant."


End file.
